I like Chicago, but I'd be lying if I said that I love. Also because I would not have the certainty of being paid. And then I have always been wary of affection for a city by those who do not live there and live it: too comfortable feelings to a place when you visit only, or you live with the comforts of the tourist or business traveler. If one does not get up at 6 am to go to work, if not try to return home at night by public transport, if you do not have to go to queue in an office or interpret the bureaucracy, all the things you normally do at home, then I do not think I can say to really know a city. At best, it recognizes the shell, but the content will remain unknown, and any attempt to describe the essence of the American propaganda that would make it similar to that in his film / documentary puts only what you need to its cause, omitting the rest. Oh no, not so here, I can not (better yet, I do not want) to deceive anyone, and for this the book you hold in your hands do not pretend to teach you what it means to live and breathe Chicago, from A to Z, road peripheral to the shores of Lake Michigan. True, I have visited and filmed many times in so many ways, come flying directly from Europe or the United States, arriving by car from all possible directions and by train, I lived for almost-resident (in the near Wisconsin) with plenty of time but also by passing visitor hectic few hours and playing the Rosemont Horizon at the United Center before leaving for somewhere, and this is enough to make dear, yes I do you go back whenever I can, to desire the sight of beautiful skyscrapers, but always knowing that words would not have had the opportunity to stay there long enough to be able to identify its DNA, provided that there is one, because in all places where there is a great movement of men are the emotional flow of people to determine the general features, rather than an unlikely genius loci. And the general characteristics vary continuously, which is why the tour guides may be good - or great - for the description of monuments, stories, itineraries, but are outdated the moment they leave, if they try to put your finger on the pulse of city, for the simple fact that the beat never stops.
So this is an attempt to describe the appearance of a basketball town, but there can be no definitive stories, except those that are already long gone, and which I believe are the most interesting part of an approach to the subject: to conquer the outer appearance, the "face" of Chicago, the architectural beauty of a part of the city, I became interested early in his sporting history, without committing the 'mistake of believing that one can influence the other, that the majestic splendor of the Sears Tower or John Hancock Building could be reflected in the spirit of practitioners - and thus people - that run on the playground and even the Sears Tower, the hate, perchŽ we work ten hours a day from Monday to Friday, and now do not raise even the most admiring eyes when you are approached, while the author of this book stops whenever enchanted by Sears and John Hancock, so dark and so so beautiful and majestic, so massive and marauders, similar - but more beautiful, for real and not imaginary - the planet of the first Death Star Star Wars, with those dark metal structures and twisted, especially the John Hancock, at the foot of which you can happily consume during a meal, sometimes twisting their necks upward to feel small in the face of its immensity.
Chicago so superficially beautiful, ranging from architectural point of view, surprising in the summer, when due dell'immensit and proximity of Lake Michigan looks really a seaside town, if you pass near the coast and you see all the outdoor activities of the many boats and sails off, striking in winter, when the presence of the lake itself causes wind gusts (the nickname of the Windy City is fully justified) freezing of those that sneak in every passage carelessly left open, and burn the skin. E 'bello - for those who have nothing to do, and time available ... - Walk along the so-called Magnificent Mile, the name affectionately given to the stretch of Michigan Avenue that runs from Rooosevelt Road to East on Division Street, and from the south, some to the south, to see how prepared are the external structures of many of the multi-storey buildings, how it was treated with attention and habit part many high buildings, steeples, niches, ledges reminiscent of a Gothic hybrid, with some surprising solutions such as bridges that link the two buildings just north of the Chicago River, not the second or third floor as in many cities in cold climates, but there the twentieth or who knows what. And then that parking garage looks like a beehive, the Chicago Tribune and the skyscraper that looks like a cathedral and not far away the building more modern and "lying" in the rival Sun Times, and the Water Tower that was once mighty and now disappears, and the beautiful library nearby, where to enter in the morning, go out with a coffee and when it is already dark, having raked in his mind all the shelves. But aside from the names and the style of buildings, are things that many might say many of the city, so I'll stop here.
In basketball, despite the homage that should also be made happy in New York, Chicago has a lot of men, structures, ideas, teams, and movements. From there they left the Harlem Globetrotters, who first converted to the clownish stage were the strongest team in the world, for the simple fact that they could deploy the best athletes of color, which had closed the doors of professionalism elsewhere, hence born the great story of George Mikan, a long with his talents and that his presence has caused fundamental changes in basketball, there are countless stories of high school players who have street created a myth that it was legitimate or not. And finally there are the Bulls, which for the first decades of the history of basketball town even existed, and yet now they are gone universal imagery to represent Chicago, to propose to the world an image that was not just one, actually stale, gangsters and slaughterhouses and the Stock Exchange of cereals and immigration from northern and eastern Europe and all the things that a diligent search can be found under the relevant heading in a good encyclopedia, says the Greek origin of the name, gives knowledge in a circle, contains within itself all that you need to know, but can not go into individual sections, otherwise the night, or rather are a thousand pages just to understand as a southern roots music like blues has found an abundant life right here in the South Side of the premises reserved for people of color in the early decades of the twentieth century and later in the smoky taverns - horror! - Alcoholic and along Rush Street, splashing away to the north six blocks from Lake Michigan.
Well, that's all. It 'obvious that the stories of Chicago basketball, just as the dynamics of the city in areas far more important, continuing even when these words become paper, and therefore there will be more in the future to be written. If at the beginning of 1984 someone had decided to reconstruct the history of DuSable Panthers, the George Marshall High School, Mikan, Quinn Buckner, the son of all of Isiah Thomas, the Globetrotters, the material would have been even too rich. Yet after a few months would be checked at O'Hare, and a mistake would not find anyone to accept it, Michael Jordan, and a book of this kind would have seemed out of time now. Right now, therefore, someone who is still playing at medium sz could cause genes to become the next big story in Chicago, and welcome, especially if he can play basketball in the totality of his mind and will not blush with shame, in ventura next edition of the Olympics, all the people who would like to see that spirit who always kept up the basket, after all, invented it.
A final caveat: before the flood of reports, articles, scholarly treatises and who knows, often by people of good will but never moved from their desk or have moved only if dad was paying, I follow some time in my day job policy in mind: to speak only of things, facts, athletes and the places I've personally seen and verified. Hard work, cause embarrassment and lose a few occasions, but I can not conceive any other way of working. Clearly, to discourse of DuSable Panthers and everything that came before the eighties I had to take advantage of what has been written by colleagues who were and have seen and reported, although in some cases I have found discrepancies in dates and names that I have caused more extensive research to see what was the reality. I also thank them, of course, that worked, without knowing it, for me.
Roberto Gotta
December 2004
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